Ecclesiastes 12:10

 A new crewman came aboard the old sailing ship and he was immediately struck by the grizzled first mate. You just tell by his appearance that he was a salty pirate. He had all the classic wounds, the peg leg, the eye patch, the hook for a hand.  After a couple weeks at sea, he worked up the nerve to ask the first mate about his career.  “Tell me,” he inquired “How did you end up with the peg-leg?”  The mate replies, “We were in a storm at sea, and I was swept overboard into a school of sharks, just as my men were pulling me out, a shark bit my leg off.”  “Wow!” said the crewman. “What about your hook”?  “Well”, replied the pirate, “We were boarding an enemy ship and were battling the other sailors with swords, and one of the enemy cut my hand off.” “Incredible!” remarked the crewman. “How did you get the eye patch”?  The pirate remarked, "Well one I was staring into the sky trying to get my bearing, when a seagull flew over me and did, well, what ...

Monday Morning Scattershooting while wondering about my obsession with Stockholm Syndrome. At first I thought it was a bad thing but now I am starting to really like it.   I worry about redundancy in my preaching.   Redundancy is when you just keep doing the same things over and over.  It's kind of like the lessons are in a feedback loop, they keep returning to the same subjects over and over.  As a listener, I hated when a preacher would get up and a minute into the lesson I’m think this again? Now for a preacher to some degree, repetitiveness is your job.  Your job is repetitiveness. You are doing your job by being repetitive. The truth of the Gospel need to be taught again and again [*] . But redundancy can take your symphonic ideas and turn them into background elevator muzak.     So how do you avoid redundancy? Here are some things I have tried  1.  Keep Good Records The computer age has been very helpful in ...

Monday Morning scatter shooting  while wondering;   If they say 1/3 of all workplace accidents go unreported. How do they know?    I once had a elder describe a person as a Biblical since he “ appears for a little while and then vanishes away”( James 4:14). Some verses are easy to apply to people. I would like to think that someone might apply Acts 18:24 to me, (an eloquent man … mighty in the Scriptures). But my guess is it probably is one of these; Top Ten verses you don’t want applied to you as a preacher           1.  2nd Corinthians 10:10   For they say, "His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible ."           2.  Jeremiah 1:6  Then I said, "Alas, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak,            3. Job 19:17   "My breath is offensive to my w...

Monday Morning Scatter shooting while wondering why people who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think     Ok, everybody calm down!  I feel the need to say that fairly often.  People get so worked up about everything anymore.  Any action, decision, or event must be debated in the public arena.  And all the indignation that comes to those that didn’t do things the way in hindsight I seems how they should have been done.  We have to have an opinion on everything that happens in the world.  Well, I’m done.  I only going to care about the things, I can shape and control.  Luckily for me I serve a God that knows all and sees all, so instead of getting worked up about everything, I’ll let him take care of it.  All these national crises and world cataclysms( Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkn...

Monday morning scatter shooting    while wondering whose cruel idea it was to put but an S in the word LISP.     I was working on a lesson about John the Baptist last week when I noticed a practical lesson.  In Matthew 11, John sends his disciple to Jesus because he having his doubt if Jesus is really the Christ.  Jesus answers John’s doubt by citing his miracles and ministry and encourages him to not to stumble.  Then right after that he does something we might not expect.  He tells the crowds about how great John is.  He praises him about as highly as you can praise someone.  I thought about how I might have reacted.  Someone comes to me and questions my work, I’d defend myself but I don’t know if I would be so quick to build that person up to others.  Jesus knows better.  People that are having questions of faith are the ones that need to be built up.  A word of praise can be a great encouragement t...

I love a good joke.   Stay around me too long and you will probably hear a bad pun, a quick one liner, or some other quip.   At times I have been criticized for my sense of humor, but I learned without it I might not be around.   A 2005 study in the Handbook of Positive Psychology found that those who use humor to cope with stress tend to have especially healthy immune systems. It also found they are 40 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke, experience less pain during dental surgery and live four and a half years longer than average.   These results shouldn’t surprise us too much. Proverbs 17:22 tells us “ A joyful heart is good medicine, But a broken spirit dries up the bones. ” Once again the truth of the word of God proves itself. A good laugh can be the best daily pill you can take.